Question about RAW

[sdominick]

I just bought a Digital Rebel and have been very frustrated with the sharpness results. I've read a lot of your posts here talking about shooting in RAW. (I'm hoping this will help my sharpness issues)

I tried shooting something in RAW and when I try to open it in Photoshop, it didn't read it off the card. So after going into Windows Explorer, I noticed that there were two files for each photo. One was in Quicktime and the other I did not recognize. Shouldn't these pictures just show up as .RAW on the card? I'm confused!

Also, If I do get this to work for me, is it possible to convert RAW to JPEG and not lose much quality? I sell my pictures on-line and the services that I use requires JPEG.

Thanks for any help or suggestions!
Sharon

[JABACo]

Sharon,

When you shoot in RAW, the camera embeds a .jpg file within. Therefore, you have two (2) picture files per shot.

Quicktime just happens to be your default viewer program for viewing pictures and such. You can change that to whatever programs you have. Such as Windows Fax & Picture Viewer (if you are running Windows XP), Photoshop LE, Photoshop, etc.

The reason for RAW is so you can make changes to the photo with out losing pixels. You can then save it as a .jpg, .bit or a .tiff file.

I'm not an expert and hopefully someone else here will at to this. But I do know this. Each time you make changes to a .jpg file and save, you lose some pixels in the process.

I shoot in both depending on what I'm doing. I'm beginning to learn more about RAW via this forum and trial and error.

Hope this helps a little

Bradley

[Belmondo]

I'd suggest converting from RAW to TIFF and then saving the file for backup purposes before converting to JPEG. Tiff uses lossless compression, and you will preserve every pixel of your photograph just as it came out of the camera. Then, you can convert a copy to JPEG for whatever purpose you have. You'll always have the TIFF file to refer back to should you need it.

Bear in mind that JPEG is a compression scheme, and whenever you use it, you will lose data from your original files. You can't go backwards from there (i.e. recover data lost in compression), so the TIFF file is a good backup for archival purposes, too.

[w10d]

Following on from the first reply: To put it simply, a RAW file records the data from the chip without processing it, and records the settings on the camera (such as white balance) which become your defaults for processing the image. Think of your RAW file as a digital negative if you like. You can't get more info from your camera. However the RAW file needs processing before it's much use to anyone - it can be processed and saved as many times as you like (like prints from a neg), processed with different settings for WB, exposure, sharpness, contrast, etc., and then saved as a TIFF (8 or 16 bit) or as a JPEG. You should have Canon's FVU to process RAW files (though it's very slow).

JPEGs from the camera have been processed according to the settings you (or the camera) have made. The file will have lossy compression applied, which means you will lose some quality (not pixels). At the highest quality settings this may not matter for many uses , such as web display. But, by shooting RAW you will have the opportunity to re-process images at any time and for any purpose, always starting from the best data your camera can capture. If you need to re-edit data in a jpeg file (i.e. sharpen/colour balance/crop/re-touch) it is best to save in a lossless format such as TIFF(without JPEG compression) or Photoshop, only using JPEG again for your final save.

HTH.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Unfortunately,. only the latest version of Photoshop (8 ) will read Canon RAW files out of the box. You can purchase a plug in for photoshop 7.1 from Adobe that will handle them as well.

You have three other choices.

1. Use the Canon Software that came with your camera.
2. Use "Breezebrowser" (much better than the Canon software)
3. Use "Capture One" (I understand this is even better)

All will do essentially the same job for you, and that is to open your RAW files in a preview,. allow you to adjust the RAW parameters directly, and allow you to convert to an image file format such as tiff or jpeg.

Again as said earlier,. if you convert,. do so to TIFF first,. and then make a jpeg copy when needed to preserve the original files quality.

Sharaon,. at first the RAW files and utilities are quite daunting especially with all the utilities that everyone mentions...

But in the end it is well worth it.
Take it step by step. And you will be very pleased with the results.

[khenn]

Sharon,

When you look at the files on the card, you will see two as you have stated. The two files will end in CRW and THM. If you look at the file size of each, you can probably guess which one is is the actual raw file. The CRW file ranges in size from 5MB to 8MB. If you are just starting (which apparently you are) with raw files, you can use the Canon FileViewerUtility to look at and extract the raw files to a usable format. Once the application is up and running you can navigate to the directory that contains your raw files, and it will display thumbnails of each of the images. I believe this is what the THM file is for (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Anyway, if you choose your camera model from the drop down list at the top, you will get an extra toolbar with image modification capabilities like white balance, exposure, contrast, etc. You can make all of these changes without affecting the quality of the final image. After you make the changes to the image and are satisfied (you will still want to probably make final adjustments like sharpness in Photoshop), you will choose File -> Save File... -> Convert and save in file... and it is on this screen that you are given the choice to extract the image as a TIF or JPEG. My recomendation would be to extract it as a TIF and work on it (in Photoshop) in this mode until you are completely satisfied with it. It is only then that you would do your Save As and save it as JPEG. As others have said many times before, every time you save a JPEG you loose some data. That is because JPEG is a compressed format. If you want the best quality possible, you could extract the image as 16bit TIF which will give you approximately a 36MB file. If you choose 8bit TIF you will get about a 18MB file. I hope you have a lot of hard drive space! When you are satisfied and decide to save as JPEG, you will get a much smaller file size. If you decide to keep using the raw mode, I would HIGHLY suggest getting Capture One DSLR LE or PRO. It does a fantastic job and is much easier AND FASTER than the Canon piece of crap that was mentioned earlier.

Good Luck!

[The Photo Tuell]

khenn wrote:
If you decide to keep using the raw mode, I would HIGHLY suggest getting Capture One DSLR LE or PRO. It does a fantastic job and is much easier AND FASTER than the Canon piece of crap that was mentioned earlier.

If you like accurate colors don't use Capture One Rebel edition (unless you like wasting time trying to get them look right). Maybe the more expensive LE or the very expensive Pro versions are more accurate. Sure Capture One is 'faster' at some things but if you have to spend time getting colors to look normal then it's not really faster in the end. FVU is less work for very good looking pictures, it's just kind of slow.

Check the Software Forum for more information about RAW.

[Canuck]

Hi
All I have is the Canon Software and have noticed that the pics on the LCD are way different then the ones I get on the screen in RAW format. They are as sharp as the ones on the LCD but are way darker on the computer. I have to do some tweaking of the brightness and contrast to make them look like what I see on the LCD camera screen. Not to fear.

sidebar:
I have got some pics of planes I captured this past Friday, including Concorde on the last flight! That is one heck of an impressive aircraft and it is too bad that all they are going to do now is collect cobwebs. There was talk and I mean only talk of keeping 1 or 2 of them flyable for airshows. That would rock! I'm wondering if they will do another UK-US flight for the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight? I'm also wondering about an appearance at the Farnborough Airshow July, 04? I hope British Airways will keep them flying! It has been sad day for England's Concorde following. Also the M25/M4 were supposed to be all bunged up! Well there was roadworks on the M25, but other than that it was one of the quickest times I have ever gotten down there doing the speed limit.

Cheers from England,
Canuck

[RichardtheSane]

THe LCD is no good for checking exposure unless you view the histogram. Even with my 10D display at the dimmest it is still brighter than the actual exposure.
The histogram can tell you if the image is over/under exposed when you read it - very handy.